I really want to like the Surface Pro. A full Windows 8 Pro device in tablet form has the potential to shake up the mobile computing world, offering genuine computing power in a truly portable package. To be *that* device the Surface Pro doesn't need to match the iPad or Nexus 10 in terms of thinness and lightness, or even battery life - after all, it offers functionality more akin to that of a laptop than a Windows tablet. But it does need to come close. UPDATE: see our full Surface Pro 3 review.

The Surface Pro launches in the UK on 23 May 2013. It will cost £719 for the model with 64GB of onboard storage, and the larger 128GB model will cost £799. So now the Surface Pro is available in the UK, should you rush out and buy one?

The good news is that the Surface Pro offers Ultrabook performance in a chassis only marginally thicker than the Surface RT. The bad news is that it is hot and heavy and the battery life isn't what we'd hoped for. It's a B+ product. A four-star device that is almost, but not quite, the one device for all. Here's why...

Surface Pro: Design and build

It's difficult to know how to judge the Surface Pro's design. It's a hybrid device, designed to replace your Ultrabook or Macbook Air and to do away with your need to travel with an iPad or Nexus 7. I'm writing this on a business trip on which I have brought a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch touchscreen Ultrabook and a Nexus 7 tablet. Compared with the former the Surface Pro is a true lightweight. It is unmistakably thicker than the 9.4mm Surface RT - and for that matter the iPad - but next to the 22mm X1 Carbon Touch its 13.5mm thickness means it's a baby. Use the kick stand and Touch or Type keyboard and you will feel like you have a tiny laptop on the go. But try to use the Surface Pro and you will realise what a chunk of tech this is.

Make no mistake: the Surface Pro is one hot and heavy device. The fact that it weighs around 900g doesn't tell the whole story. In our tests it ran really hot - as might be expected of such a small Core i5 device - and holding it in one hand for any period of time is a trial. There are two near-silent fans working to dissipate heat, but they do a far from perfect job. It also looks and feels almost fatally chunky. This is a subjective thing, but unlike the svelte Surface RT the Pro has a certain Fisher Price asthetic. It just doesn't look like something I'd want to show off to my friends.

The Surface Pro does retain the design plus points of the Surface RT. That 22-degree kickstand is a neat solution, albeit one with no gradient so you have your screen angled at 22 degrees or not at all. And the way the Type keyboard clicks in is a joyous thing. But the gap between the back and the top of the chassis remains. It's presumably there to allow for air flow, but we can't say it adds to the way the Surface Pro makes us feel.

The Surface Pro has a better display than did the RT. It is a 1920-by-1080-pixel, 10.6-inch screen. That makes for 208 pixels per inch - somewhat behind the iPad or Nexus 10, but not so as you can really notice. It's a decent screen for a tablet, but on size alone it can't match up to that of a decent laptop. Viewing angles are pretty good though, at least side to side. It's a pretty reflective screen, however. We found it all but useless outside.

Surface Pro: storage

The 128GB Surface Pro we tested offers only 83GB of usable storage capacity. The Surface Pro supports USB 3.0 so you can expand your storage using an external drive. There's also a MicroSDXC card slot in case you want to add onboard flash memory.

Surface Pro: performance, connectivity, battery

Here we meet only good news. With an average PCMark7 benchmark score of 4751 the Surface Pro is a Windows 8 PC offering the performance of a high-end Ultrabook. Consider the specs. Like the previously mentioned ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch (and the Dell XPS Duo 12, Lenovo Yoga 13, et al) the Surface Pro is supplied with a 1.7GHz Core i5 CPU, 4GB of RAM, 64GB or 128GB SSD, and integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000. It's a power laptop in tablet form, and it performs as such. It's truly zippy in use - there are compromises being made here, but not in the general performance of the Surface Pro.

The connectivity options are good, too. You get a Mini DisplayPort which can drive HDMI and VGA displays - get a full-spec keyboard and a decent display and the Surface Pro could be your primary PC when not in tablet use. My PCWorld.com colleague Jon Phillips tested the Surface Pro driving a 24in Dell monitor with a 1920x1080 resolution with no problems at all. (He also used the Surface Pro for Photoshop work which worked well.)

The Surface Pro has integrated graphics, which means it's not much of a gaming rig. In PCWorld.com's Civilization V and Dirt Showdown gaming tests frame rates were described as 'unplayably poor', with numbers in the mid-teens at best. We did, however, see a playable 34 frames per second in Dirt Showdown after reducing in-game resolution to 1366 by 768 and setting visual quality to low.

Battery life is good, but perhaps not good enough for the new category of device that the Surface Pro represents. With a 42-watt-hour battery the Surface Pro has Intel Ultrabook battery life, rather than that of an Arm-based tablet. In PC World's video rundown test, the Pro lasted only 5 hours, 8 minutes. This compares poorly in comparison with hybrid tablet/Ultrabooks such as the W700 (6 hours, 7 minutes), and the Yoga 13 (5 hours, 37). Perfectly useful, but nothing compared to the Surface RT or the iPad, both of which offer more than 9 hours of in use battery life.

Surface Pro: pen

The Surface Pro comes with a pen that offers a drawing and writing input for the tablet. It's a passive device that doesn't draw power and attaches magnetically to the side of the device. According to Microsoft the Surface Pro's pen offers 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity and it's true that it is a very sensitive tablt pen. In use it can be laggy however, and it feels flimsy and plastic - if you're spending this much money on a tablet you want premium quality, and the Surface Pro's pen doesn't feel like that at all.

The pen does offers a certain amount of useful functionality, however. In essence it's useful when you need a drawing pad, and pointless at all other times. And sitting on the side of your Surface Pro it can feel a little in the way.

Surface Pro: software

For the full low-down on Windows 8 read our Windows 8 review. For the Surface Pro suffice to say that it offers the full no-holds-barred Windows 8 Pro experience. So you can run any software that you have installed on any other Windows device, as well as Windows apps. That means you can run Office on your tablet, making the Surface Pro a more than useful travelling companion for business people.

Surface Pro: keyboards

The two Surface keyboards are compromise devices. The Touch and Type Covers are brilliant keyboard/covers, but you have to consider what the Pro is good at, and then wonder if a combination case and keyboard is good enough. I started typing this review on the Type Cover... and gave up. It's perfectly useable, but with a full laptop keyboard within reach it just seemed a compromise too far to have to wrestle with what is a mobile keyboard. The keys are small, don't have much travel, and suffer from a perceptable lag. Both covers are as good as it gets in tablet cover keyboards, but that isn't as good as a proper keyboard or even that of an Ultrabook.

The Surface Pro is the best Windows tablet we've used. It also makes a pretty good laptop. But as a tablet it's not match for the best iOS or Android devices, and as a Windows laptop it can't compete with Ultrabooks. It's portability and performance will be perfect for a few, and okay for most. So that makes it a good but not perfect device, which feels about right as a verdict.

The Surface Pro 3 is the thinnest and lightest of laptops, which also passes muster as a full Windows tablet. And, according to Microsoft, people are buying into the Surface Pro 3. Here's our Surface Pro 3 UK review: Surface Pro 3 benchmarks, specs and buying advice.

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Comments

messyjungle said: Why so brash and vulgar fisher-price

Reece Charlton said: Hello I am a 12 year old School student and want a Surface but dont know whether to get the Surface Pro or Surface 2 One has windows 8 Pro and the other 81 RT I love windows 81 but not so much 8 I defiantly want office 2013 programs and might want to install a PC app such as chrome The obvious choice is the Pro but the RT is thinner lighter cheaper and has more battery The RT is also more portable which is defiantly what I want Which do you think I should buy

John Barlow said: I like your comments because they make sense The ipad is a beautiful device filled with many awesome features If people enjoy using it and it suits their needs so be it Ive had my Surface Pro for about 6 months now and I dont think of it as a tablet even though it can function like one For me it functions mainly as my desktop I have it plugged into a 40inch Sony XBR at home The Surface converts whenever I need it on the road with me Its an excellent first effort from Microsoft I love using it and am looking forward to version two

Guy said: Hi Matt thanks for the replyBeen a while since I checked on the posting lots of views Having now got the Surface Pro I find it great it does exactly what I wanted That doesnt mean Ive cleared the house of all ipads etc I still have my ipad 2 which my wife and kids mainly use but it still has its uses for quick access and leisure stuff For my work as a surveyor and business travel nothing gets near the Surface Pro for leisure and quick surfing and other home stuff the ipad wins out Its all down to what you want to use it for Im in construction not from an IT background so I have no axe to grind in either case I think some of you need to take your blinkers off once in a while

Bert said: Its like comparing Apples no pun intended and Oranges The iPadNexus etc are toys They nod in the direction of serious working tools but no more than thatThe microsoft RT pro is a serious bit of kit that also does the toy side of thingsTo vote it down as not as good as an iPad based on who knows what parameters really baffles me and most of the people replying to this thread

Smith said: In summary the surface pro for a business man all other tablets are for play man I would go for the Surface Pro for a single reason is freedom I agree a bit pricy but freedom beats anything

Prudhvi said: Does it have a 3g dongle facility

Piter Visser said: A pretty darn good score Id say for a new class of devise - am certainly interested I reckon MS is on to a winner with the format - I admire their bold decision with Win 8 and this device I am keen to replace my somewhat bulky laptop and my only good for a few tasks- ipad with one device that does the lot Thanks for the review and reply

Luigi said: Hi can it actually run any program which runs on desktop win 7 PC

Matt Egan said: Its a fair point And I think I have expressed that in the piece although obviously not strongly enough Its a compromise between Ultrabook and tablet As such it is a very interesting device but it suffers from a couple of issues that make it only a four star product hardly a disaster

Piter Visser said: Not concerned about the being biased debate I do think that your premise was perhaps wrong you expected wanted it to be close to both an ultra-book and a common tablet I reckon it is a class of its own and should be regarded as such If the Surface Pro is the first its kind it sets a new benchmark against which other similar devices should be judged Not sure how MS markets it thoughIf laptops are Apples pun intended tablets are pears then this is an orange all fruits all grow on trees all juicy inside but quite different just the same

PeterB said: Interesting review and fascinating comments Ive been looking for the best compromise tabletkeyboard combo for work I travel most the time so weight is important and battery life vital I need full Windows 8 to run Office software and a Windows based audit system Im beginning to think that the Atom powered Windows 8 machines may be the best i35 Pro tablets are too heavy hot and battery life too short RT Android IOS will not run full Office or the audit software so Atom seems the best compromise Perhaps a little slow but the machines are lighter than i35 and have good battery life But which one Samsung ATIV looks good but the hingelock seems to be iffy Acer Iconia 500 looks cheap but seems to work well HP Envy looks great but no 3G Surface misses the mark with the processoroperating system

Matt Egan said: It definitely shouldnt only be compared to Arm-based tablets The battery life is great for a full Windows PC and the functionality is better than an Arm tablet should you wish for full Windows computing But it is relevant to compare it to all tablets and the fact is that to be truly portable better battery life is required Room for improvement

Wowsers said: Its not based on every other test ever done With casual use web browsing playing win8 games etc I have used my surface pro for several hours throughout the day and recharged overnight to do the same the next day Individual results may vary I can also watch netflix for more than a couple of hours without plugging in The battery life compared to arm based systems is wanting But it should never be compared to ARM based systems should it

joester said: WAS meant for different purposes 108 Mountain Lion and 109 is more going to be

Matt Egan said: You are correct - no data connectivity I suspect the reason is that it would drain the already strained battery And the modem would add to bulk heat There are some exciting new processors set to be launched by Intel perhaps they will help and allow a second gen Pro to be - as you say - truly portable

Mike said: Sorry Matt - one other comment you didnt mention anything that I could see about the connectivity wifi 3GLTE etc on the ProAs much as Id love a Surface Pro I understand it doesnt support any sort of mobile broadband which for me being an MS developer and power user is pretty much the only reason I wont be buying one very disappointed by MSs decision on this -Some of the newer tablets coming out soon are going to have both 3G and 4G LTE so I will be waiting for one of those why make a tablet if it cant be used truly as a mobile device

Mike said: All this debate about which is best is very simple - for the corporateenterprisedeveloper world you just cant go past MS Apple doesnt even do a server or a database or anything scalable that I know of and therefore the Surface Pro is the pick and maybe the RT for not-so-heavy users that perhaps just need to access corporate web sites and apps For playing cute games the wonderful screen choice of apps and excellent design the iPad is the one Personally I find Android confusing clunky buggy and slow so for me it becomes black and white - MS-powered tablets for the professionalcorporate world and iPads for leisure settled Well as far as Im concerned it is